Falling Leaves Collage and The Great Bittersweet Harvest

"October gave a party -

the leaves by hundreds came."



~  George Cooper

 

 

I learned this George Cooper poem in third grade.  Not sure why I'm still using valuable brain storage space on this when I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday!  But I digress; I want to share a fall-inspired collage.

 

 

I found this little (about 6 inch square) piece of wood on the beach and knew it had potential.  This is the first time I've ever done any art work on wood and it was fun - banging nails is so therapeutic!

 



 

I washed on some diluted acrylic paint and added some extra color with oil pastels around the edges.  The stenciled tree was done with acrylic paint.  I cut out leaves from various fall-colored papers.  The fun part was banging in small nails on the leaves and adding some curled wire .  A small piece of torn book binding along the bottom adds some grounding.

 

I kept coming back to work on this, thanks to the advice from Claudine Hellmuth's class.  The leaves seemed too bright, so I went over them with a Tumbled Sage Distress Ink pen.  The tree was too dark and all one shade of brown, so I scratched over it with a raw sienna watercolor pencil. 

 

On to bittersweet -  I know that bittersweet is considered an invasive species, but I can't resist those red berries with their orange cases and all those twirly vines. 

 



 

My car, filled with a haul of bittersweet.

 

 

The Captain - bittersweet whacker in chief.  It's hard to see in this picture, but the branch he's holding has a bonus - an empty bird nest ! 

 

 

Now some people might call this crazy, but I told you I love bittersweet.  Here's that branch, sporting its birdie nest and announcing that fall has come to the dining room.

 

Bittersweet in the cloche.  Don't you love this little white pumpkin all blinged -out?